In January 2019, authorities in Uganda intercepted a shipment of nearly 4 tons of elephant ivory and pangolin scales on its way to the capital, Kampala, from the neighboring Democratic…
For the past 30 years, soaring demand from East Asia has fueled massive poaching of a South African abalone, Haliotis midae, reducing the mollusk’s population to a fraction of its…
With hooks, nets and lines, industrial fishing vessels stream into the waters around the Seychelles every year, looking for a fish known as “blue gold”: tuna. The most sought-after tuna…
Humanity’s response to pandemics to date is similar to our climate change response: mitigation rather than prevention. A new study says preemption could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives; but preparation is grossly underfunded.
“The white gold of jihad.” “Case proven: ivory trafficking funds terrorism.” “How killing elephants finances terror in Africa.” Just a few years ago, headlines like this were commonplace, as conservation…
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
A recent article on the Emirati newspaper The National reports that, according to conservationists, “The increased enforcement by Somaliland in the Gulf [of Aden] and along known smuggling routes, plus the…
U.S. timber companies imported nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, circumventing sanctions and channeling millions of dollars in revenue to the country’s junta, according to a…
Combating illegal logging and deforestation in the tropical forests of southwest Myanmar helps preserve wildlife populations, but remains insufficient in the face of unsustainable local hunting pressures, a new study…
Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within…
This is part three of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one looked at offshore fishing; part two focused on a new exclusive-access zone for small-scale…
This is part two of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one focuses on offshore fishing; part three looks at changes to the near-shore trawling sector. …
In May 2014, the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) seized a consignment of wood at the port of Mombasa. Shipping records listed the cargo only as "wood" headed for Hong Kong:…
Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the…
After forests are logged, felled trees are typically sent to sawmills, where they’re processed into boards, or lumber. It’s in this processed form that wood typically enters the international commodity…
Since the 1950s, the rich tropical forests of the Greater Mekong region have been steadily depleted by the world’s growing appetite for timber. Did you know that if all the…
“When people see the nuts all bagged up here, they think it’s easy, but it’s really tough out there in the rainforest,” says Waratan. “You have to find them, cut…
Twenty years is a long time to talk about fish. But hopes that World Trade Organization (WTO) members would finally reach a meaningful agreement to ban subsidies that enable overfishing…
Did you know that illegal logging can be five times as lucrative as selling the world’s most well-known soda? In 2020, the Coca-Cola company reported $33 billion in revenue. The…
We cannot expect forest countries to halt the bulldozers if we keep paying for the fuel. Yet that is what we will continue to do if the EU doesn’t get…
Açaí has always been part of the Amazonian diet. Locals consume the round, purple fruit, which grows in bunches on the Euterpe oleracea palm tree, almost daily. In the mid-1990s,…
Medical, public health, and conservation experts are calling for greater pathogen surveillance and regulation of the legal wildlife trade in order to quickly identify pathogens and prevent the next pandemic.
CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and…
During the pandemic, demand for furs by Chinese, U.S. and EU fashion consumers has set off few alarms, but COVID-19 outbreaks on EU and U.S. mink farms raised questions over the fur trade’s role in spreading zoonotic disease.
As demonstrations and deadly crackdowns continue to roil Myanmar following the military coup in February, land and environmental defenders are increasingly under threat. In the seven months since protests erupted,…
Since it launched in December 2019, the RenovaBio program from Brazil’s energy ministry has been betting on increased use of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to establishing…
Negligible fines and inadequate enforcement are turning Italy into a hotspot for illegal Myanmar timber in spite of EU sanctions and regulations against the latter's timber trade, according to a…
Nigeria’s emergence as a trafficking hub for illegal wildlife appears unhindered by the coronavirus pandemic. Between 2016 and 2019, some 200 metric tons of pangolin scales were seized by law…
This is part of a three-article series on industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters. Part one focuses on offshore fishing; part two focuses on a new exclusive-access zone for small-scale fishers; and…
In May 2020, Shivaprakash Nagaraju, senior scientist at The Nature Conservancy in India, was working in New Delhi when he contracted COVID-19. “I had breathing problems and other symptoms, and…